BRUSSELS — In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.

Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Promising the end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give Mr. Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this year.

Mr. Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of American troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.

The name Barack Hussein Obama II, as inscribed on both short and long forms of President Obama's Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth, provides a clue as to one underlying motive for vacating American (and coalition) non-special-ops combat troops.

President Obama understands something that few among US government officials understand, and, in my assessment, Obama’s understanding has motivated him to cease serious efforts at “democracy-building” in Afghanistan, and also Iraq.

Democracies worth speaking of have in common certain traits which can be summarized by these words from the Declaration of Independence (21st Century capitalization protocol), “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Which rights? Creator-endowed, unalienable rights, i.e., tights given by power and authority greater than any man, councils of men, or government instituted among men (Creator-endowed) that cannot be legally disparaged by any man, councils of men, or government instituted among men (unalienable).

Rights endowed unto whom? The paragraph begins(21st Century capitalization protocol), “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men… are endowed… with certain unalienable rights”, with all men deriving its meaning from Genesis 1:26-27, “Let us make man in our image… in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”, thus establishing with reasonable certainty that “all men” is gender inclusive (“male and female”) and “race”/ethnicity/religion/non-religion inclusive (no mention of these man-made divisions).

Afghanistan and Iraq don’t get this, particularly insofar as “gender” and “religion/non-religion inclusive” are concerned. If my memory is accurate, an Afghani man was issued a death sentence by an Afghani court for converting from Islam to Christianity. Due to international pressure, this man was allowed to flee Afghanistan and was given refuge by Italy.

Obama has focused upon our reason for being there; to kill al qaida and taliban. He’s not talking about democracy building in a country whose people cannot understand that the unalienable right of free exercise of religion applies to persons of all religions.

Last edited by RockOnBrother on Thu Feb 02, 2012 11:12 pm; edited 1 time in total